Music in the Liturgy, Part Two: Introducation to Vatican II

Greetings,

Last week, we examined the use of music in the liturgical worship of Israel and the Early Church of the Apostles as institued by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper. These come to us primarily in the Holy Bible and are continued today in an unbroken line of teaching from those same Apostles who, as our first bishops, passed down what they learned in the “school of The Lord”. This forms the basis of what we know to be our Sacred Tradition or the official teaching of the Church which is also known as The Magisterium (from the Latin for “teaching body”). These include dogma — what we believe definitively, as well as our doctrines, which are those observances we hold as passed down by the Apostles in union with St. Peter and his successors and therefore worthy of belief and practice.

This week, we look specifically into our liturgical worship as outlined in the great Ecumenical Council of our time, Vatican II. It was Inaugurated by Pope St. John XXIII in 1962 and concluded by Pope St. Paul VI in 1965. While much has been suggested about what Vatican II said, it’s important to let the documents containing the words of the council fathers speak for themselves.

In regard to The Mass and music, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, in Latin: Sacrosanctum Concilium, holds up for us the central importance of the Eucharist and the ceremony in which it occurs, the liturgy we call The Holy Mass. In its own words, there were several aims:

“it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church. (SC, 1)”

In short, it wanted to increase the zeal of Christians to live their Catholic faith, examine how to adapt to the needs of a culture beset by a great deal of social upheaval in the 1960s, and to foster a desire for other Christians to see the Catholic Church not as something foreign, but as a source of unity and a true “home” in which to find Jesus.  The Mass is at the center of this, because it is the central part of our identity. As St. Maximilan Kolbe said several decades before the council, ”Be a Catholic: When you kneel before an altar, do it in such a way that others may be able to recognize that you know before whom you kneel.”

To that end, Vatican II said that “in faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right and dignity; that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way. The Council also desires that, where necessary, the rites be revised carefully in the light of sound tradition, and that they be given new vigor to meet the circumstances and needs of modern times. (SC,4)”

The first directive states that priests must be properly instructed in the liturgy so that they in turn can instruct their people to both know and understand what they are doing when they go to “kneel before an altar” at Mass.

The next desire of the council has to do with wanting the people of God to receive all of the graces possible from the Mass. And so, “holy Mother Church desires to undertake with great care a general restoration of the liturgy itself. For the liturgy is made up of immutable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change.”  What is called for is restoration and not revolution or rupture with tradition, so that any “updates” do not seem foreign to the integrity of The Mass.

With this as an introduction, next week we’ll examine the general norms that the council envisioned.